Think about these numbers for a moment.
It took Apple 42 years to acquire a market value of $1 trillion. It took only two years more to become a $2 trillion company and that too the second $1 trillion being notched up in the last 21 weeks.
Apple’s market value is just a shade less than India’s 2019 GDP of 2.94 trillion. That GDP covers 1.4 billion people. Compare that with Apple which employs just 137,000 people.
The company is now the sixth largest economy behind the United States, China, Japan, India, the United Kingdom and France. Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, is like a head of state whose state is in fact the world. Valuation of companies is a dicey business because value does not last too long. Just as rapidly Apple became a $2 trillion company, the first US company to do so, it can equally lose that too. Apple reached that staggering evaluation when its stocks rose 1.2 percent to $467.78 in morning trading on August 19. A case in point of what I am saying being that as recently as March its value fell below $1 trillion in mid-March after the coronavirus crashed economies and companies around the world.
As has been pointed out by those who follow such trends the dramatic spike in Apple evaluation is no thanks to some spectacular innovation in recent times. It has just become a ruthless money-spinner.
It is a measure of how much of a money-spinner it has been that compared to India’s foreign exchange reserves of US$538.191 Billion on 07 August 2020, Apple has $194 billion in cash and bonds.
It is entirely possible that the evaluation could drop tomorrow morning but for now Apple is like a nation, without borders of course, in terms of what it is worth and should perhaps consider applying for a membership of the United Nations. (It’s a joke, people.)
Sitting alone in his office I am sure there are times when Tim Cook wonders to himself, “Really?”